Here are two common challenges when building online training courses: knowing what content needs to be in the course and then having the right visuals to support the learning of that content. One way to overcome these challenges is to increase your visual thinking skills. You’ll learn to focus on the right content and then find the right visuals to support what you’re teaching.

Safer Internet Day SID is an annual, global campaign that promotes a healthy Internet for everyone. Organized by Insafe and co-founded by the European Union, Safer Internet Day encourages the responsible use of online technologies and services. This year’s theme, “Let’s create a better Internet together,” reminds us that we all have an active role to play in helping to protect our families, information, and devices.

Microsoft continues its commitment to help make the Internet safer for people of all ages and abilities through investments in family safety technology, key partnerships, and consumer education and guidance.

To mark SID, we are launching an interactive website—Microsoft.com/SaferOnline—where people can #Do1Thing to stay safer online and create a better Internet, learn what others around the world are doing to avoid risks, and raise Microsoft dollars for TechSoup Global, a nonprofit organization using technology to solve global problems & foster social change.

ExamTime is a free web service that gives students and teachers a place to organize mind maps, flashcards, quizzes, reports, class notes, and more. The service was designed for students and educators, and you can use it to store your own notes and class materials, or use it to collaborate with classmates.

ExamTime has specific templates for storing mind maps, flashcards, notes, and quizzes, so they’re the easiest to add. As you upload them, you build out a collection of study data thats easy to refer back to when you need to brush up for an exam. The services study planner also makes it easy to build a schedule for your classes and your after-class study sessions, so you can make sure youre studying the right topics at the best times. Plus, everything you post can be made public or private, and shared with friends on or off the service, so comparing notes and quizzes is a snap.

Are you an active user of Windows Azure? Tried it and not convinced, or yet to give it a go? There are a whole range of resources available to help you get to grips with the Cloud and harness the power of Azure, and we have recently released a number of new free documents on top of whats already out there. More than that, we also have some free events planned to introduce the multitude of Azure services available and give you the chance to ask questions to Microsoft experts and partners. You can find a summary below, along with some great examples of how it all really works in practice.

Author Cathy O’Neil argues that the right approach to data is skeptical, not cynical––it understands that, while powerful, data science tools often fail.

Data is nuanced, and “a really excellent skeptic puts the term ‘science’ into ‘data science.'” The big data revolution shouldn’t be dismissed as hype, but current data science tools and models shouldn’t be hailed as the end-all-be-all, either.

Amazon.com rivals Wal-Mart as a store, Apple as a device maker, and IBM as a data services provider. It will rake in about $75 billion this year. For his book, Bloomberg Businessweek’s Brad Stone spoke to hundreds of current and former friends of founder Jeff Bezos. In the process, he discovered the poignant story of how Amazon became the Everything Store.

Stop making to-do lists. They’re simply setting you up for failure and frustration. Consider the to-do lists you’re currently managing: how many items have been languishing since Michelle Bachman was leading the field for the Republican nomination? How often do you scan your list just so that you can pick off the ones you can finish in two minutes? How many items aren’t really to-dos at all, but rather serious projects that require significant planning?

There are five fundamental problems with to-do lists that render them ineffective.

If you’re looking to spread your digital wings a bit, you probably want to find some of the highest quality educational iOS apps available. You probably head over to the official Apple App Store on your chosen iDevice and check out the ‘featured’ area and perhaps the ‘Top Sellers’ list. That’s great and a solid way to see what is being used on devices around the world.

For the most part, though, all those top apps are either just big names or have had some recent promotion. As someone who once made an iPad app, I know what it’s like to try and get your app onto one of those promoted areas in the App Store. You would do just about anything because, as I found out, your sales and download numbers skyrocket as soon as you crack the top 100 apps in your category.

So how should you avoid the crazy featured and top sellers lists? By becoming familiar with the category filters, of course!